And it nearly did.
I was there, holding my father’s hand, when Jeff delivered the news, and the shock was as dreadful as we foresaw. My father—my strong, giant of a father—began to weep. “I’ve lived too long. My death can only be an advantage to my family now.”
“You’re very wrong!” I cried, for his death was the thing I most feared all my life.
My son, always pragmatic, echoed my horror but explained the financial reality, too. “Grandpapa, even independent of our love for you, your death under existing circumstances would be a calamity of frightful magnitude. Your life isn’t only precious to our hearts, but necessary to the interests of your daughter and grandchildren.”
What he meant was that just by living, my legendary father cast a shield over us all. While he was alive, the most ruthless of our creditors wouldn’t dare to strip us bare.
They say tragedies come in threes. There was first the auction of Edgehill. Next the blow that we might lose Monticello. And then my daughter Ann came to us in the dead of winter, battered, bleeding, and bruised.
ANN STAGGERED INTO MONTICELLO clutching a threadbare shawl too small to cover her swollen stomach. She’d been badly beaten—her eye half-shut with swelling, bleeding scrapes on her elbows and knees. Ann wasn’t very heavy, even with her rounded pregnant belly; she was nothing but shivering skin and bones. “I can’t stay with Charles,” she said, weeping, as if we were in any doubt. And when we got her in front of a fire, she said, “He’ll kill me. I fear he’s already killed the baby in my womb. Please don’t tell Jeff I’m here. He’ll convince Grandpapa to turn me out, and I’d deserve it. I’d deserve it.”
“Never,” I said, rocking her as if she were still a small child. “Jeff’s in Richmond on your grandfather’s business, but even if he were here, he wouldn’t turn you out. Nor would your Grandpapa ever hear of it. You’re safe here, my precious Ann.”
“How will I face my sisters? The last time Cornelia saw me, she nearly turned me to stone with those gorgon eyes.”
“Your sisters will be as delighted to see you as I am.” And if they weren’t, I’d make them pretend. Because Ann had never been taught to do anything but honor and obey a husband, and none of this was her fault.
Ann was too weak to go up the steep stairs to the family bedrooms, so we put her into the same bed Jeff had used to recover from his stabbing. And for the same reason. Both my children were victims of that vile wretch Charles Bankhead!
Would he come after her? Would he dare? My husband had abandoned us, my father was frail, and none of the slaves, or even the overseers, were brave enough to confront Bankhead with the force required. So I made my own plans to defend us.
My sons James, Ben, and Lewis were all young men now, between the ages of sixteen and twenty. While closing every paneled shutter over the windows of the house, I told them to arm themselves—not with a horsewhip or a fire iron, but with pistols. Because if the moment came, I didn’t want them to injure Bankhead, but to see him to his grave.
Instead, we saw Ann to hers.
In scream-inducing pain, she gave birth to a little boy. Seeing the bruises on her body and the bleeding that wouldn’t stop, the physician dosed her heavily with laudanum. Ann didn’t want it, and I protested the physician’s prescription. But the doctor said my daughter had internal wounds that couldn’t be repaired. Then he gave her a dose that left her speechless and insensible.
Slipping into much the same condition, I lingered with Ann, holding her hand. Such was the state of my own distress that, for a moment, I saw not only my beloved daughter dying in childbed, but also my dear, sweet sister, who’d lost her life in childbed. I’d blink at Ann’s brown hair, and for a moment see my sister, then my mother, then my daughter again.
I was so lost in time and place, I scarcely heard the words of the doctor, who finally said, “Mrs. Bankhead is past hope.”
I suppose I heard these words. They were simply too shattering to accept. Inside my head, I screamed a glass-shattering scream, but in truth I made not a sound. I sat there with my dying child—the grief swirling like fury in my skull—blind and deaf to the whole world.
I couldn’t rise until afternoon, after Ann breathed her last. Even then, it was only because, like a sudden dam that must be built to fend off the flood of anguish, I was frantic to do for my child the very last thing that I could do for her in this world.
I couldn’t cry. I couldn’t swoon away. I couldn’t lock myself in my room and pace the floor howling and smashing and breaking things. I couldn’t ride through the woods in madness, though I wanted to. How desperately I wanted to!